Letters: Newtown shooting, fire insurance and more

Examining a tragedy

In response to “ ‘Our hearts are broken,’ ” (Dec. 15): When I was a child, the closest exposure to random violence available was “Bonanza,” which was really a show about values, about right and wrong. Today’s children are taught moral equivalence – that right and wrong are relative, and they are immersed in a cauldron of violent and misogynistic movies, television, music and video games that evoke all the characteristics of this terrible tragedy in Connecticut. For those who are mentally or emotionally unstable, this palette of violence is more than enough to inspire such horrible actions.

We are all in shock, but only the naive could be surprised. Sometimes it’s not pleasant to look in the mirror – this tragedy belongs to us all. - Neil Hokanson, Encinitas

In response to Raymond Schwartz (Letters, Dec. 15), who wrote “The NRA wants us all to have a gun to ‘protect’ ourselves. But I do not know of any one time when a person threatened with bodily harm by an armed person had the ability to have possession at that instant of a gun to defend himself!” he should find the NRA’s Armed Citizen stories interesting reading.

Schwartz continues with “We have professionals who are charged with this; they are called police, sheriffs, etc.” Remember, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. - Scott Markel, San Diego

Yet again, another mass murder with guns. While not a gun owner, I understand the position that people kill, not guns. Until today. No matter how law abiding, or well intentioned legitimate gun owners are, guns get into the hands of the wrong people.

If you’re a gun owner, go look into eyes of the parents and loved ones of those massacred in Connecticut on Friday. Go defend your position to them. The right of those innocent children and people to their lives trumps ever claim you can ever make to your right to own a gun.

It’s time to outlaw the sale of guns to civilians, period. - Jack V. Cohen, San Diego

I wish that just once a public official would respond to a shooting by a crazy person by correctly calling attention to the failed mental health model in this country.

Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza suffered from a “personality disorder,” as did Arizona shooter Jared Loughner when he gunned down Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Yet there is no effective system of identification, uptake and treatment of the afflicted.

When popular movies such as “The Snake Pit” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” poisoned public opinion on the mental-health profession, they also detoured public policy away from research, treatment solutions, and effective help for the afflicted and their families. Now they populate our jails, prisons, and traffic islands instead of treatment facilities.

President Obama could have used his tearful moment to correctly identify the problem and set us on the course called for by National Council on Disabilities which, in a 2002 report, characterized our mental health policies and programs as “in crisis.”